The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

In the Basque country, things were very different. Juntas of defence were replaced by the autonomous Republic of Euzkadi, which came into existence on 1 October. (The Basque red, green and white flag, the ikurrina, had already replaced the republican tricolour.) The formal establishment of the Basque government, with José Antonio Aguirre as president, or lehendakari, was confirmed by a meeting of municipal delegates in traditional fashion exactly a week later when oaths were sworn under the sacred oak tree of Guernica. The conservative Basque nationalist party held the most important portfolios, while republicans and socialists were allowed the lesser ones.⁵ The anarchists, who were strong in San Sebastián and the fishing communities, neither demanded nor were offered any role in the administration. The Basque nationalists established a very rigid control with their paramilitary militia, the Euzko Godarostea, which excluded left-wingers and non-Basques. However, both the UGT and the CNT later formed their own battalions to fight in the army corps of Euzkadi. The mixed feelings of the Basques, loyal to the Republic which gave them autonomy, yet far closer in social and religious attitudes to the nationalists, was to create a disastrous mistrust within the alliance.⁶

Of all these regional moves to self-government, the most extraordinary and the most important took place in Catalonia. The journalist John Langdon-Davies described the contradictions in Barcelona, calling it ‘the strangest city in the world today, the city of anarcho-syndicalism supporting democracy, of anarchists keeping order, and anti-political philosophers wielding power’.⁷ On the evening of 20 July Juan García Oliver, Buenaventura Durruti and Diego Abad de Santillán had a meeting with President Companys in the palace of the Generalitat. They still carried the weapons with which they had stormed the Atarazanas barracks that morning. In the afternoon they had attended a hastily called conference of more than 2,000 representatives of local CNT federations. A fundamental disagreement arose between those who wanted to establish a libertarian society immediately and those who believed that it had to wait until after the generals were crushed.

Companys had defended anarchists for nominal fees when a young lawyer. His sympathy for them was unusual among Catalan nationalists, who often referred to them in almost racial terms as ‘Murcians’, because the major source of anarchist strength had been among non-Catalan immigrant workers. Although some Catalan politicians later denied his words, Companys is said to have greeted the anarchist delegates thus:⁸ ‘Firstly, I must say that the CNT and the FAI have never been treated as their true importance merited. You have always been harshly persecuted and I, with much regret, was forced by political necessity to oppose you, even though I was once with you. Today you are the masters of the city and of Catalonia because you alone have conquered the fascist military…and I hope that you will not forget that you did not lack the help of loyal members of my party…But you have won and all is in your power. If you do not need me as president of Catalonia, tell me now and I will become just another soldier in the fight against fascism. If, on the other hand…you believe that I, my party, my name, my prestige, can be of use, then you can depend on me and my loyalty as a man who is convinced that a whole past of shame is dead.’

Whether or not these were Companys’s exact words, Azaña later described this as a plot to abolish the Spanish state. But the Catalan president was a realist. Official republican forces in Barcelona amounted to about 5,000 men of the paramilitary corps and events elsewhere had shown that it was very dangerous to rely on them entirely. The regular army no longer existed in Barcelona, for most of the rebel officers had been shot and the soldiers had either gone home or joined the worker militias. Meanwhile, with rifles from the Sant Andreu barracks and from elsewhere, the anarchists were estimated to have some 40,000 weapons distributed among their 400,000 members in Barcelona and its suburbs. It would have been folly for Companys to have considered attacking them at their moment of greatest strength and popularity. The anarchists also appeared to be his best allies against the reimposition of Madrid government. Companys expressed the situation drily: ‘Betrayed by the normal guardians of law and order, we have turned to the proletariat for protection.’